The picture above shows Amelia Earhart in Britain with the boys of Toynbee Hall. Each, in a different way, boldly operated outside the boundaries of society's expectations. When I was about the age that my eldest daughter is now, I knew Earhart as a woman of brave designs, breaking gender barriers. She was the first woman to cross the Atlantic. It wasn't enough. She wanted to be the first aviator to circumnavigate the globe.
Years ago, I assumed she crashed to her death in the Pacific. I'm sure my assumption was based on the views of those around me. Propelled by my daughter's admiration for Amelia, we've read up on the aviatrix, including Amelia's The Fun of It, her last reports, online sources and newspaper articles. There is not a doubt in my mind now that she landed her plane short of its destination at Nikumaroro Island, just as she landed short in Ireland on her trans-Atlantic trip to Britain. I have no doubt that she sent out radio signals and held out as bravely as possible with her navigator, Fred Noonan, to the end. I know a great deal was done in the attempts to find her and Noonan. Somehow, I still feel that she did not so much fail as we failed her. We gave up the search.
Like Amelia, Toynbee Hall, founded 1884, defied prescriptions of the day. Located in London's east end, Toynbee Hall moved beyond blaming the poor for their poverty. It became a model for future settlement houses. It provided the poor with food, shelter and higher education. It attempted to charitably offer some of those forsaken by the wider society the skills necessary to become self-supporting. By bringing the rich and the poor together, Toynbee House defied increasing trends towards societal segregation.
Toynbee Hall became a model for settlement houses in other nations. By 1913, the U.S. had 413 settlement houses in 32 states. Jane Addams' Hull House in Chicago is, doubtless, the most famous of the lot. U.S. settlement houses provided many free services to community members, including daycare, education, after-school activities, job training, health care, and classes in arts and crafts, music and drama. Settlement houses came to be known as community neighborhood centers.
Settlement houses in the U.S had an additional function of helping immigrants adjust to their life in America. I am sure many of those who sought to help others had some cultural biases directed against those whom they served. Still, I think most immigrants welcomed these institutions and the people in them who so willingly donated money, time, knowledge and kindness to help them navigate a strange, new, unforgiving and sometimes unfriendly landscape.
Russian reformers attempted to plant the settlement model in their country in 1905. Tsar Nicholas II, however, soon viewed the idea as dangerous. He closed the settlement houses by 1908. Indeed, his failure to support any lasting reforms, including, perhaps, these settlement houses as well as the October Manifesto, seemed to presage his own fate. When one cannot bend, one often breaks.
Given his distaste for reform, Tsar Nicholas might have been correct in feeling threatened by these houses. U.S. Settlement houses increasingly took on political goals. They organized to push for progressive measures, including a wider political voice for women, child-labor laws, public kindergarten and improved sanitation in poor neighborhoods. With the advent of WWI, settlement houses began to lose steam and redefine themselves. They continue today as members of the United Neighborhood Centers.
In my mind, the application of settlement-house models to schools is entirely natural. In the last decade of educational deformity, community-based schools have been targeted for closure. In my mind, this is a crime. Charter schools are opened in their place. They recruit the students who seem to need the least help. They further segregate society. They banish students who cannot make the grade and, in that way, preserve their seemingly near pristine stats and claims of 100% graduation rates.
With increasing poverty in society, community-based schools need to be strengthened, not weakened. Community-based schools are in the best position to act like twenty-first century settlement houses, integrating populations as they provide basic services and help people gain marketable skills. Schools are natural choices for community focal points.
I'm sure Amelia's plane is somewhere out there, swept into the sea and now buried deep in the Pacific floor by the sands of time. I'm equally sure you won't find her body in it or that of Noonan. I'm sure she landed it safely and made it ashore. After the time and expense of a search, we, ultimately, gave up on her.
I hope we don't give up on children like those pictured with her at Toynbee Hall. I hope we do not continue to blame teachers for poverty. Instead, I hope we put our faith in the teachers who dedicate their lives to help these children. I hope we give teachers the resources they need to teach these children despite the time and expense. I hope schools can bring diverse peoples together and when possible offer wraparound services, settlement-style. At the very least, I hope we can give these students the supplies they need to learn in rooms with a lower student-teacher ratio. I hope we can allow them to learn in classrooms in which teachers are respected community members, rather than scapegoats. We have already seen too many twenty-first century Tsars choosing to close pubic schools instead. Let's not bury our hopes under a false blanket of "teacher blame." Let's not give up on this search when so many lives and the welfare of society may otherwise crash.
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